A letter to my American friends: when did the dream die?

Thanks to Trump, Americas worldwide authority is shot, or nearly so. This great country deserves better, writes Simon Tisdall

It is difficult for Americans to watch the presidential parody that is Donald Trump with anything approaching equanimity. But it is also hard for non-Americans long-time friends and admirers of the United States who look on helplessly from afar.

Reactions range from amazement and amusement to shock and dismay. How has this frightening travesty come about? What does it mean for the America we love? And what does it portend for a world accustomed to sensible, reliable, rational American leadership?

Every country has its political mavericks and clowns. But to put a shadow figure like Trump, a profoundly ignorant, self-obsessed narcissist lacking any discernible moral compass, in charge of the nations affairs looks like an act of collective madness.

Seven months after he took office, the situation has not normalised. On the contrary, it grows more abnormal by the day. Just look at Trumps aberrant press conference performance on Tuesday when, breaking his word of the previous day, he deliberately re-opened Americas most sensitive wound racial division and picked at the Charlottesville scabs until the blood gushed anew.

This reckless divisiveness, this shameless moral ambiguity, this historical know-nothingness, this thinly-disguised bigotry these are not the qualities one expects of an American president. This is not leadership. This is not change. This is not greatness renewed.

This unworthy man, and the far-right ghouls who cling to him, set a dreadful example for the rest of the world, from the very country that is deemed by many to be the ultimate symbol of justice, liberty and democratic governance.

As president, Trump has surrounded himself with far-right advisers such as Steve Bannon now removed from his role after a chaotic tenure at the White House Sebastian Gorka and Stephen Miller, whose views seem to differ little from those of the Charlottesville neo-Nazis.

During last years campaign Trump failed repeatedly to convincingly distance himself from supporters whose idea of democracy was to parade about, shouting Hail Trump! On the institutional discrimination suffered, for example, by blacks and Hispanics in Americas justice and penal systems, he has nothing whatever to say.

And if you doubt the impact of such gross derelictions of duty, take a look at figures produced by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. It reports that, nationally, the number of hate crimes in the first half of 2017 spiked 91% compared to the same period in 2016 (which was itself a record-breaking year).

Seen from Britain, Trump is exploiting the same bitter brew of racial prejudice, populism, ultra-nationalism, economic resentment and sheer bloody ignorance that helped produce the vote for Brexit and the recent surge in support for far-right parties in France and elsewhere.

This should be no surprise. This is how narcissism works, by sucking in others and making them think and act as badly as you do yourself.

Patriotism, flag-waving and love of country are all very well in their place. So, too, are policies designed to advance economic justice in disadvantaged places, such as parts of Ohio and Michigan or the north-east of England.

But the anger and resentment of the middle class, of blue collar workers and trade unionists whose livelihoods are disappearing, was already in evidence 25 years ago when I trod the ravaged streets of downtown Detroit.

So, too, was white Americas bottomless sense of entitlement deeply puzzling in a country reared on ideas of rugged individualism, the frontier spirit of self-help, and manifest destiny.

That same anger was there in Chicago in 1988 when Mike Dukakis, the Democrats presidential hopeful, walked the Irish neighbourhoods and men came out of bars to throw bananas at Jesse Jackson (I watched them do it). It was there when self-styled insurgents Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot tapped it in subsequent presidential campaigns and during the Obama years, although less often heard.

Heres what changed in the age of Trump: when such angry sentiments are whipped up and magnified for unscrupulous personal advantage, when a political leader encourages ordinary people to blame other groups, races or nations for their problems, when fear and blame become the twin forks of a wicked grab for power, and when the resulting fury tips over into hatred, division, Charlottesville-style violence and America First xenophobia, you know you are in big trouble.

Alarm bells should begin to ring.

Just ask any European, where memories stretch back to the rise of fascism in the 1930s. Just ask anybody who ever confronted a skulking bully with a big stick.

Are alarm bells ringing loudly enough across Trumps America? Perhaps, after Charlottesville, they will. In the final analysis, Trump is just one man. But his actions, and non-actions, as president are hugely symbolic and exert massive negative influence.

They feed on and actively encourage the disempowering sickness of resentment and entitlement that seems to infect much of white America. They frighten everybody else. And they threaten the world with the contagion of separation, division and paranoia.

If fitness, primarily moral fitness, is the ultimate test, as Bush Sr believed, then Trump has proven himself to be fundamentally unfit to lead. Lacking any sense of the greater good, as de Tocqueville defined it, Trumps way is not the way to make America great again. On the contrary, it diminishes us all.

Simon Tisdall has reported on the US for the Guardian and Observer since 1988. He was the Guardians White House correspondent and US Editor based in Washington DC from 1989-1994.